Reincarnation

[RR1997]

I know that reincarnation is mainly a Hindu and Buddhist belief, but I was reading some interesting articles about how there are Christians who believe that reincarnation is real, and that reincarnation is in the Bible. I don't know how much truth there is behind this, but it still interesting nevertheless. Then I decided to post a poll about this on the Religion Board. Do you believe in reincarnation? For me the answer is yes, since I am Hindu. I believe that you do get reincarnated based on your good/bad deeds in your previous life. Although it is a common misconception that Hindus believe the soul immediately reincarnates once you die. This is simply not true. We believe that the soul first goes to hell/heaven for a certain amount of time before you reincarnate.

[Meursault]

The Eternal Return is a much more unnerving idea than generic reincarnation.

[afleitch]

Thank you for posting here It's really nice to have a different perspective.

It's been talked about recently on here. The short version for me is that do not consider there any proof for anything outside of our own mortal consciousness so I don't believe that anything 'exists' for us after we die. There is no 'after death' because death is the end point. If there was such a thing as a survivable consciousness in the form of a soul, then I think given that we can only understand the idea of the soul when we discuss the living coupled with the fact that we do not see consciousness unbounded from the physical form, that by extension it seems that souls need bodies and bodies need souls.

Therefore the idea of a cyclical 'reincarnation' would make a greater sense than the traditional Christian destination of the soul. Our entire understanding of reward and punishment is affected by physical and environmental stimuli (feeling the good and feeling the bad) so it seems impossible for an entity deprived of the physical to feel anything and therefore feel the effect of any reward or punishment exerted on it. If it's going to be dished out for whatever reason by whatever is in control, then it has to be done physically and therefore a reincarnation into a physical form as penance or reward for a past life would make more sense to me.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

No.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Eternal Return is a much more unnerving idea than generic reincarnation.

I agree with this entirely. I also find it more metaphysically convincing, which is itself also unnerving.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The supernatural is an alternate way of explaining the unknown. Dreams in your sleep do allow one to think that the subconscious, where the soul lies does survive death. Which warns you of impending danger. Whether it is heavenly or earfhbound by resurrection or incarnation is questionable.

[Fritz]

Yes

[The Dowager Mod]

Yup.

[windjammer]

I'm not sure.
However, I believe we can be possessed by spirits who suffered from a terrible death: drowning or suicide for instance.
Not natural death though.

[I Will Not Be Wrong]

Yes.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

It's possible.

Like afletich, I believe all we can really "know" is our own consciousness and what we discern of the outside world through it. So who am I to discount a theory of what is beyond this life, the here and now?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I can't say I find reincarnation all that satisfying a concept.  Since we are unable to make use of the experiences of our past lives while in our current incarnations, it adds an extra layer of complexity beyond that found in the simpler concept of there being an afterlife.

It seems to me that it exists primarily as a means of explaining why bad things happen to good people—they were bad in a previous life.  However such an explanation seems to me to be in opposition to free will.  It means that people don't do things to others because they choose to, but because they are part of the mechanism for punishing people for bad things done in previous lives and also rewarding them for good deeds.  Yet is it then just to punish or reward people if they act because they must in order to punish or reward people for previous actions?

Hence if reincarnation exists, I can't accept the idea that it exists as a means of enabling karmic retribution or reward. Yet absent that aspect, I see no particular reason for reincarnation.

[DemPGH]

No.

Why is it that I do not remember anything from before I was born? Why doesn't anyone for that matter? (Hypnosis, of course, is very highly unreliable.)

Nothing suggests that consciousness survives the death of the brain since consciousness arises from it.

[SNJ1985]

Absolutely not.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/New%20Age/reincarnation_is_a_lie.htm

[Mopsus]

If I were spiritual, I would most definitely believe in reincarnation. Transmigration just strikes me as a much more logical explanation of the fate of the soul than divine judgment, followed as it is by either exaltation or damnation. It also rids us of that particular problem in Christianity (and in other religions, presumably), namely the fate of those who died without having a chance to either embrace or reject God's Word.

[afleitch]

I can't say I find reincarnation all that satisfying a concept.  Since we are unable to make use of the experiences of our past lives while in our current incarnations, it adds an extra layer of complexity beyond that found in the simpler concept of there being an afterlife.

It seems to me that it exists primarily as a means of explaining why bad things happen to good people—they were bad in a previous life.  However such an explanation seems to me to be in opposition to free will.  It means that people don't do things to others because they choose to, but because they are part of the mechanism for punishing people for bad things done in previous lives and also rewarding them for good deeds.  Yet is it then just to punish or reward people if they act because they must in order to punish or reward people for previous actions?

Hence if reincarnation exists, I can't accept the idea that it exists as a means of enabling karmic retribution or reward. Yet absent that aspect, I see no particular reason for reincarnation.

The afterlife is not a simple concept nor is it a balanced one. It places a great degree of importance on your actions (or perhaps, irrespective of your actions) in one life, whether you die in an incubator a few days old or just after your 100th birthday. As I’ve outlined before, as a fraction of infinite time it is so miniscule as to be of both no value and of equal value to the largest expanse of time you can envision (which still falls short of infinity). The living have technically no time at all. And yet their destiny is judged on that. Even if you embrace a universalist position, allowing the consciousness an infinity of time in which to reflect and make peace therefore ensuring no one is placed in ‘hell’, given that no one knows what the standards of the arbiter (or god) are, it could well be that not one person who has ever lived has actually met those aims. Therefore there is no heaven, nor a hell, nor any place of finite rest or if there is, not a single person is there. As eternity has no end, then it may well be the case that we are spiritually chasing a destination that can never be reached.

The afterlife is is not a balanced concept as it is preoccupied with the transition of the soul or consciousness from the living to the not living. It pays little attention to the consciousness prior to it being embodied into a living being. From the not living to the living if you will. Given that the circumstances of your birth are beyond your control, the conditions under which you are born have a very significant impact on your life and the choices you make and can make. It is disjointed to place weight on the decisions that you make in life informing the circumstances after your death, but not place weight on ‘decisions’ affecting the circumstances of your life coming into being. As you know, I’m not bothered by or informed by metaphysical concepts but if I was, I don’t necessarily have to consider the decisions affecting why you are born as being ‘karmic’. They may be entirely arbitrary (as indeed causation dictates) It may well be that your consciousness is placed in whatever vessel is available to it. It may even have a choice.

Karmic reincarnation serves the same moralistic purpose in the concept of reincarnation as exposure to a pleasurable or dis-pleasurable outcomes does for the concept of an afterlife so I don’t think it can be criticised on that alone. If there is a consciousness, the idea of a cyclical consciousness is much more balanced and simplistic whether one wants to impose a reciprocal good/bad justice system onto it or not. Indeed given that concepts such as right/wrong, justice, pain/pleasure are very much informed by the physical, you would be more assured of actual punishment/reward in any case.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

  I was trying to be as general as possible with the term afterlife and not limit it to the usual Christian/Greek concept of a realm for reward and/or punishment for deeds in this realm, but any sort of consciousness that may exist beyond this corporeal realm we share.

Also, my critique on karmic retribution and reward was based not on punishment or reward being given, but that it would necessarily be given by other actors in this realm.  Hence those actors would be deprived of free will, yet we are all both actors and actees.  Post-corporeal punishment and reward do not imply a lack of free will.

Lastly, while our span of existence in this realm is bounded, it is not finite, at least in the mathematical sense of those terms.  It is quite possible to do a bijection from any bounded segment of the real numbers to the whole set of real numbers, or in other words, one can map even a single day onto the entirety of linear time.  In either case, one has an infinity of moments.

[BaconBacon96]

I find it quite fascinating. It certainly makes a lot more sense to me than any permanent heavens or hells that the soul supposedly goes to after one's death.

[afleitch]

  I was trying to be as general as possible with the term afterlife and not limit it to the usual Christian/Greek concept of a realm for reward and/or punishment for deeds in this realm, but any sort of consciousness that may exist beyond this corporeal realm we share.

But it's still an afterlife with no 'forethought', if you will. Concentrating on what comes after over what comes before is what makes the concept of the afterlife an imbalanced one, regardless of any reward/punishment system intertwined with it.

[LBJer]

I find it quite fascinating. It certainly makes a lot more sense to me than any permanent heavens or hells that the soul supposedly goes to after one's death.

Yeah, being rewarded or punished for all eternity for something you did during a brief period on Earth makes little sense (although for someone like Hitler I'd think he'd deserve a punishment lasting billions of years or more, given all the people he killed and caused to suffer horribly).

[Cory]

I don't know if it's real or not but I'd almost rather go to a "hell" then be reincarnated. The idea of forgetting my entire life and being someone else entirely just scares me.

I think the only fair thing would be for everybody to go to paradise regardless of what they did in life. At the end of the day emotion statements aside people do things out of a reaction of circumstance rather then sheer malice. For example Hitler was a terrible person who killed millions without thinking twice. But if you actually understand the person you see that he was a True Believer. He didn't kill 12 million people just to be a dick, it was because he was genuinely deluded and thought they were "the enemy".

The fact of the matter is people do things as a reaction to circumstance and that "free will" as we know it is largely a myth. People are created by circumstances and their beliefs/values reflect that. Cause and effect is everything. A truly all-knowing and understand God/entity would understand this.

I'm sorry to those who believe in hell as a defense mechanism to justify life's downsides ("well the baddies are just gonna go to hell!") but there is nothing, absolutely nothing someone can do in one lifetime to deserve eternity in a Saddam-style torture chamber. I don't think people realize what they are saying when they say people "deserve to be in hell" or some-such. It's just another thing people say without thinking to make themselves feel better and self-satisfied.